Sitemap - 2024 - Harry's Last Stand Newsletter

The leaders of the West dehumanised billions of people to ensure their citizens don’t feel guilt for the exploitation and mass death of the vulnerable.

We must refuse to be at the mercy of a neoliberal society besotted with fascism

Trying to survive during an era where ignorant armies clash by night.

From their struggles, the modern Welfare State was born only to be destroyed by neoliberalism over the last three decades.

During an August that has as much war anxiety as 1939-hope clings on like a last breath of life.

She died in mid kiss, but her fight for socialism lived on.

In a world where the 1% own half of humanity's wealth, democracy isn't an endangered species, it's as extinct as the dodo.

When a city was made silent by plague.

"Last year, you could still smell the stench from decaying bodies trapped underneath the city’s wreckage."

I am not an expert in broken healthcare systems. But I am one of its victims.

The West normalised genocide & dehumanised migrants- the mass murder of refugees will be next on their agenda.

"I have survived.."

England's Nazis aren't going away-they will be back and they will murder Refugees in their sanctuaries.

Kristallnacht came early to England.

We live through the history of our era by the skin of our teeth.

The death of the before times is a grief that we can't overcome.

It's like 1914 outside because the Guns of August rage in the distance.

Fascism has always been a Fraud against the Working Classes.

Covid was a plague that attacked humanity's body and soul and none of us are the same.

"Society denied my sister the right to a well paying profession and financial independence." Tales from the Green & Pleasant Land.

"My Son Peter battled schizophrenia to a hard-fought draw."

It's a brief dance to the music of time & without love, shelter, food, purpose and friendship, a bleak waltz across existence.

"I wasn't convinced dying for the King in this war was the purpose of my existence."

"He looks and acts like a vulgar Nazi."

London: No Place for The Poor or Elderly. Harry Leslie Smith's reflections on the Capital City .

"We wanted something more than a bread and drippings democracy."

"We couldn't afford healthcare so we died earlier than the middle classes."

The working title for Labour's coming austerity is: "There's not much money left."

"Wars are conducted for the rich and powerful and fought by the poor and hopeless."

Twenty-five years gone, and her dying still has grief's stinging venom, clawed into me.

There is only the darkness of fascism if we exclude socialism from our politics.

The Housing crisis is about creating a two class society-us and them.

"Fascism saw it as blood in the water because society was in upheaval, from economic collapse."

Shit is about to get real- for the US and the world- whether it is a Biden Presidency or Trump.

Canada Day & Summer in the Before Times- When Moments of Leisure Were Permitted by Capitalism.

A Starmer Labour Government won't bring real change to people's lives & because of that- there will soon be violent discord on the streets.

Whether it's 1934 or 2024 capitalism delivers a raw deal for workers and the poor.

Refugees coming to Europe, Britain or the USA don't have a hope in hell of mercy from Macron, Starmer or Biden.

Democracy won't survive neoliberalism, and should we continue on this path- most of us will envy the dead. More chapters from The Green & Pleasant Land

Keir Starmer has pronounced Public Healthcare DOA for his Labour Government in waiting.

21st century Robber Baron capitalism is going to mark our premature deaths under the ledger heading-Shit Happens.

If I die earlier than expected, let these writings be used as a working class history of the things that were past and have now returned to torture us.

For rich "liberals" in America-it's the messenger of fascism they loath and not fascism's message.

Father's Day- And The Awfully Big, Beautiful Adventure of Being Alive.

Labour's Election Manifesto is Trickle Down Economics and it will only benefit the rich.

"A bunch of bastards, who dared to call themselves Labour."

We should fear the hard scrabble past of the 1930s because it's our future. Tales from the Green & Pleasant Land.

The table is being set for another world war. The EU election results will hasten us to the slaughter.

A heart attack, and then a cancer diagnosis made me realise; it's the journey, not the arrival that matters.

80 years after D-Day, the West has lost the war against fascism.

Ten years ago today, Harry's Last Stand was published. That Harry Leslie Smith's past is our present is the fault of neoliberalism.

New Grub Street-Episode Two: Austerity & the Politics of Nigel Farage.

D-Day was not about making society a safe haven for the undertaxed wealth of the 1%.

Much like today, the summer of 1930 was harsh and hungry for Britain's working-class.

Neoliberalism created another lost generation. Chapters from the Green & Pleasant Land

The Green & Pleasant Land Chapters 5 & 6 Fascism is as threatening in 2024 as it was in 1933.

New Grub Street Episode One:

Before the "World's Oldest Rebel" died he wrote a final book about poverty. Chapters 3 & 4

The Green & Pleasant Land-Harry Leslie Smith's last book-a plea for the Welfare State.

Democracy never survives an affordability crisis

“It is still bleak and stinks of human suffering.” Harry Leslie Smith on neoliberalism

National Service, The Boomers final Betrayal of the Greatest Generation.

Only tyrants and technocrats with a penchant for authoritarianism run on a platform of "stability."

Even if we refuse to read the hands on the clock, the hour is striking the time for our extinction.

It's time Corbyn took the gloves off against Starmer.

Ironically, in the interest of fascism NATO is going to pimp out the memory of D-Day.

A Keir Starmer Labour Government has a good chance of becoming Britain's first authoritarian technocracy.

"It's not because we didn't value democracy but because our democracy didn't value us. " The rise of fascism..

My mother hinted at the different paths her life could have taken while she lay dying in 1999.

It's not economics that created the cost of living crisis but neoliberal ideology-where we are all expendable.

Victory in Europe Day 2024 is a farce because we are genocide appeasers.

Like 1938, our society in 2024 is buying time, until a big war begins in earnest.

The working class always struggles to rebel before being worked to death.

The last Hail Mary pass for democracy and free speech is being thrown by those demonstrating against Genocide.

A new politics must be born from the ashes of these corrupt times or we are doomed.

When Power is concentrated in the hands of the wealthy few world war is our fate.

"I was determined to forge a path out of Poverty"

Concentration camps for refugees seeking asylum in Britain is a fascist solution to the refugee crisis.

A Greatest Generation is being born for the 21st century from the carnage of this immoral war, in Gaza.

I don't know if we are too late to stop the construction of fascism as the dominant ideology in our own countries, anymore.

Today it is concentration camps for asylum seekers looking for sanctuary in Britain. Tomorrow it will be you if you are poor, marginalised or homeless.

If you are poor or working class mental illness will shorten your life by decades.

We have lost so much, including our democracy because capitalism insists that poverty is necessary for wealth creation

"In 1937, I despised the empire, the monarchy and the whole rotten system that held it together."

We are Binge Watching our own apocalypse and didn't notice we have reached the end of the cliff.

The April Rain when another war was being waged.

We live in a new Gilded Age, and we are on the outside looking in.

If we don't rein in Capitalism by reconstructing a functioning Welfare State- drudgery is the fate for most people.

State Assisted Suicide for the terminally ill in neoliberal economies is another box tick for dystopia, if we don't fix poverty first.

Socialism in a neoliberal world is a day in the life of Sisyphus.

If you vote Labour or Tory during the next General Election, you are the turkey voting for Christmas.

Democracy isn't on the ropes it's down for the count.

The rich are mortal, but their time spent between living and dying isn't the same as our brief dance to the music of time.

In 1936 the working classes knew a war against fascism was only a matter of time. In 2024, we should understand this too for our times.

The 1% have kept us in check with abject poverty, debt poverty, wage poverty, housing poverty, and education poverty, Centrist Governments don't change that.

21 Years after "Shock & Awe," The chickens have come home to roost and the West has become if not a failed state a failed idea.

March 17, 2020, when normal stopped working.

"The working class neighbourhoods of my youth were designed to stifle hope & erase beauty from the lives of the inhabitants. Socialism changed that."

Pick A Lane Because Otherwise An Eternal Season of Totalitarianism Awaits Us.

"In 1935, the books I read at my local library made me aware- poverty wasn't the natural order of things, but instead a perverse and cruel means to control & subjugate ordinary humanity."

Whether it was the 1930s or today, capitalism has always been about making workers beasts of burden for the benefit of the rich.

Growing up in Nazi Germany ensured my mother's post-war feminism was political and left-wing.

If the Working Classes built a Welfare State in the past, we can do it again. But to do it we must destroy neoliberal politics.

History teaches us-Humanity can only live for so long in chains before it rises up in revolution.

"My family mouldered on capitalism's fallow fields of industry during another cost of living crisis that we called the Great Depression."

In 2024 we stepped through the looking glass into fascism. Only emulating how The Greatest Generation built democracies for the many and not the few will save us from annihilation.

Consumerism keeps us diverted, while the corporate news media, the 1% sheepdog, herds us towards fearing the most vulnerable rather than the rich.

The Journey not the arrival matters-the 101st birthday of rebel and socialist, Harry Leslie Smith.

"Democracy doesn't die in Darkness but in the full light of capitalism." Harry Leslie Smith February 25, 1923-November 28, 2018.

It's probably toothache but because of financial reasons I postponed my CT scan for cancer reoccurrence, I fear it has returned.

In 2024, if you are a senior citizen you should rage against the dying of the light for the young rather than the old.

"In the 1930s, my Mum sold her body to pay the rent, to ensure her kids weren't homeless." Capitalism will never be the friend or ally of the working class. Harry Leslie Smith

Childhood was a luxury for the middle classes until the birth of the Welfare State.

There are greater odds for revolution to befall the USA than Russia at the moment.

Neoliberalism in 2024 like Capitalism in 1934 is a system winded from its exploitation of ordinary people. It will break, if we force it.

Anxiety is poverty's co-pilot.

Saturday night and Sunday morning. Harry Leslie Smith on witnessing habitual violence against his mother by an intimate partner.

We are firmly on the road to, if not species extinction, societal annihilation. But mainstream politics wants you to believe the existential threat is higher taxes.

Child Labour in 2024 is as it ever was an exploitation of working-class kids. It is the same capitalism & politics normalising it today that did so in 1932.

Living and Dying in a Rooming house is now a 21st Century thing, the way it once was a Great Depression thing.

2024 will be as desperate as 1932 for those crushed between the jaws of a worsening cost of living crisis & governments beholden to the 1%.

The Wests response to Gaza, put to the sword any pretence that we are a civilised race of creatures.

Covid is the plague that just won't leave, so we can get on with living our best superficial lives.

The Bedbugs of Halifax-The Green & Pleasant Land-Harry Leslie Smith

Whether you want it or not, revolution is coming- most likely of an authoritarian nature. The worst hasn't even happened yet.

"I remember the screams from the dying, in 1931, who were too poor to afford a doctor because there was no public healthcare." Tales from the Green & Pleasant Land.

Britain, Europe, Canada and the USA's war on refugees is a politics Hitler would approve of.

Underpaid and over-leveraged by debt, ordinary citizens may as well be racing dogs chasing mechanical rabbits at the track, and the 1% at Davos are betting on our obedience.

Like 30 years ago, Cuba in 2024 smells of the sea, tobacco and famine thanks to the USA's Embargo.

Covid 19 is the plague that now defines our epoch.

By this time next year- darkness at noon will have come regardless of who becomes US President.

The Green & Pleasant Land in the Year 1931-What was old is new again.

Maybe it won't amount to a hill of beans. But at least future generations will say "They tried."